2023 Orlando Magic Draft Day Thread (#6, #11): THE DAY IS HERE!

[basketballRob]

Black is a connector and will make the team better. He's going to be diving on the floor like Suggs. I think he'll quickly supplant Cole as the backup PG, and if Fultz has an injury, Black will be the starting PG.

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[Def Swami]

Going through some Jett Howard highlights and actually really liking what I’m seeing offensively. He’s nowhere near as stiff as I had previously thought.

Going to try to watch some full games tomorrow to get a better idea of what we are working with but I’m nowhere near as angry as I was two hours ago.

This is kinda what I beg people to do. Everyone saying Howard was a reach I think just hasn’t watched him play. Guy can be a great shooter and scorer. We all have jobs and lives part of reason we rely on **** mocks to narrow down our watching of players. Mocks are flawed.

I feel like he was mocked way higher at the beginning of the college basketball season and just gradually fell as the season went on. He's a good player. The pick reminds me of the Suns picking Cam Johnson a few years ago. They got killed for "reaching" for Johnson in the lottery, but he proved to be worth that pick.

[VFX]

I’m not a fan of what we did tonight tbh. Nothing I can do but see how it all plays out, but I’m not all too thrilled.

If we trade Markelle and he blossoms and Black doesn’t do much I will never ever forgive this front office.

Fultz isn't getting traded... yet. Those flashes (normal 3's) at the end of the season has me intrigued but I'd be willing to cut bait fairly quickly if it was a mirage. Cole is also a FA but I bet the FO is happy with him in the backup PG role.

One thing is for sure… a lot of guys are going to be playing their asses off worried about their jobs this season.

[Rick Rolled]

Going through some Jett Howard highlights and actually really liking what I’m seeing offensively. He’s nowhere near as stiff as I had previously thought.

Going to try to watch some full games tomorrow to get a better idea of what we are working with but I’m nowhere near as angry as I was two hours ago.

This is kinda what I beg people to do. Everyone saying Howard was a reach I think just hasn’t watched him play. Guy can be a great shooter and scorer. We all have jobs and lives part of reason we rely on **** mocks to narrow down our watching of players. Mocks are flawed.

I definitely fell victim to the mocks this year, and did my own scouting accordingly, which completely excluded Jett.

I went against my typical approach tonight and absolutely bashed both picks.

I didn’t do that the previous two years despite hating the Franz pick and being lukewarm to the Paolo pick. Woefully wrong on both fronts. So much better to be patient.

Gotta give these guys a chance to show what they’ve got, and like you said earlier, can’t just go based off of summer league (I responded to you in a dickish manner when you said that, and I definitely apologize). Gotta give them some time to find their footing.

Can’t wait to see these guys on the court together in 10 days or so. It seems like we added two smart, high character guys who should be able to get minutes immediately.

[SD2042]

If you go by our draft picks over the last 23 years, it appears our scouts also might be casuals. Seriously, look it up, our draft history has been dreadful. Most players were either outright busts or injury prone. Over 23 years we've had maybe a handful of players that were serviceable or better that stayed healthy and played for us for an extended period of time.

Now we're hoping out 1st round pick guards can replace our recent 1st round pick guards. It's time we take a long hard look at our scouting methods and personnel because clearly we have room to improve.

We should hire you…


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Can I do worse than nearly every player across the past 23 years being a bust, injury prone, or playing elsewhere after a couple of seasons?

Nope.

Do you know how many coaches this team have come and gone the last twenty three years? 11

Different coaches will bring in different staff members including scouts to research the next set of players who best fit these respective coaches system. Again, the system is not suited and booted to be righteous all the time. You also have to keep in mind you will run across some coaches who simply do not care to develop players for the sake of the teams future. Doc Rivers and Scott Skiles for example are notorious for not placing emphasis on player development. Any rookie who gets drafted to team with a coach who thinks like these two do, you can forget it. That rookie is all but screwed at this point. That goes to how the system creates issues from different aspects.

Since you stated earlier that this team needs to change their drafting philosophy from the years of failures, what ideas would you suggest?

[neuraldarwinism]

Everyone on the athletic nba pod has loved black this entire draft cycle. May hit, may not, but far from a crazy pick. I like the high IQ ball movement direction we are taking.

Consensus going into the draft was that from 15-30 prospect rankings there was wide variability in where teams set their rankings and the distance between rankings was very small.

To nerd out a little with stats for the youth (while high), basically rankings (Rank orders) assume equal distance between raw scores.

That is, the distance between Rank/prospect 1 and Rank/prospect 2 is the assumed to be the same distance as between rank/prospect 6 and rank/prospect 7.

This assumption however is never true.

For example, the distance between the number 1 ranked team this year (Bucks) and number 2 team (Celtics) was 1 game.

The distance between the 29 ranked team (Spurs) and number 30 ranked team (Pistons) was 5 wins.

In other words, the projected probability of success for the 15-30 ranked prospect in this draft were pretty much equal.

Jett is as good of a bet as any and his skill set is something we desperately needed.

For reference, on average for the last 4 drafts (important to note this is a projected above average class) 4 all nba/all stars, 3 key starters/bench players, 4 solid bench role players, 3 fringe/out of league are selected in the lottery.

Most importantly about the picks, our star likes it.

No matter how good you are as an evaluator or stats, once you filter out the extreme outliers (even then can still be wrong), you can only wait to see how it plays out. A lot of ways to win.

[CZ Eddie]

They just got a steal with Keyonte Johnson.

[msmoore66]

Don't worry regardless we got this guy

Neo Banchero

[RookieStar]

Don't worry regardless we got this guy

So Paolo finally visited Italy?

[Rainwater]

Amari Baily g/f or sister we need more pix

That's his Mom, Johanna Leia. She dated drake, lol.

[89Magicfan]

What kind of a player is a 6’7 combo guard without elite passing or shooting?

[thelead]

I’m not a fan of what we did tonight tbh. Nothing I can do but see how it all plays out, but I’m not all too thrilled.

If we trade Markelle and he blossoms and Black doesn’t do much I will never ever forgive this front office.

Fultz isn't getting traded... yet. Those flashes (normal 3's) at the end of the season has me intrigued but I'd be willing to cut bait fairly quickly if it was a mirage. Cole is also a FA but I bet the FO is happy with him in the backup PG role.

One thing is for sure… a lot of guys are going to be playing their asses off worried about their jobs this season.

The most exciting thing for me is that we shouldn't have 'boring' portions of games where we're struggling to put a real NBA team on the court for stretches (like when Fultz, Cole, Suggs, and Isaac were injured) and we had a ton of g-league guys playing in 2nd unit.

Those days are (hopefully) finally over.

[Rainwater]

I'm not barfing but I'm still not happy about it. Then again my ability to be unhappy had to be kind of spread out after the Howard pick.

I'm still barfing. I don't like Black as a player for us, BUT what's making me barf even more is Fultz Suggs and Cole are all on the record saying how much they love Orlando and how good the organization has been to them. Now 1 or maybe 2 of them are going to get bounced somewhere else and is going to be a nice example to Paolo and Franz on why being "loyalty" means nothing

crap.....now ur making me barf more too...

I'm disappointed but you guys are overrating. Pretty certain Paolo and Franz are aware that this is a business at the end of the day, lol.

[VFX]

Fultz isn't getting traded... yet. Those flashes (normal 3's) at the end of the season has me intrigued but I'd be willing to cut bait fairly quickly if it was a mirage. Cole is also a FA but I bet the FO is happy with him in the backup PG role.

One thing is for sure… a lot of guys are going to be playing their asses off worried about their jobs this season.

The most exciting thing for me is that we shouldn't have 'boring' portions of games where we're struggling to put a real NBA team on the court for stretches (like when Fultz, Cole, Suggs, and Isaac were injured) and we had a ton of g-league guys playing in 2nd unit.

Those days are (hopefully) finally over.

I’m legitimately curious how teams back courts figure out lineups with Black and Suggs. It’s going to be so annoying for other teams lol.

[RookieStar]

BTW... is Howard the 1st pick of the reported shooters in this draft? Like Hawkins Dick etc etc? There must be something with him if we got first dibs on all shooters ane we chose him?

[RookieStar]

What kind of a player is a 6’7 combo guard without elite passing or shooting?

Former ROY MCW

[VFX]

BTW... is Howard the 1st pick of the reported shooters in this draft? Like Hawkins Dick etc etc? There must be something with him if we got first dibs on all shooters ane we chose him?

Yeah, he’s 6’8, from Michigan, was injured last season, and Weltman was making the pick.

That’s why he went higher than expected.

[[whistler]]

Don't worry regardless we got this guy

Hey Paolo, how much do clothes cost in the Matrix?

[SOUL]

I had to change my profile cause it was too hard

[SOUL]

If TJD goes undrafted I'd love him as a 3rd C